Bank of Russia registers another digital asset issuer – Finance Bitcoin News

The Central Bank of Russia has added another entity to its register of authorized issuers of digital financial assets. The platform, called ‘Masterchain’, becomes the fifth ‘information system operator’ in the country that can legally tokenize traditional assets and organize their trade.

The number of licensed issuers of digital assets in Russia grows to five

The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has included the company Distributed Registry Systems, with its Masterchain platform, in the register of operators of information systems that can be used to issue digital financial assets (DFA), the business news portal RBC reported.

Four other issuers have been registered so far. These are the tokenization service Atomyze, the fintech company Lighthouse, as well as Sberbank and Alfa-Bank, respectively the largest state-owned and private banks in Russia.

Established in April 2021, Distributed Registry Systems is an IT company specialized in developing blockchain-based solutions for finance, transportation, logistics and other industries. Several major Russian banks, the Moscow Stock Exchange and the Association “Fintech” are among the founders.

In the first instance, the company plans to issue digital financial assets for rights to monetary claims, either in the form of bonds that are not linked to specific assets, or as structural instruments linked to various assets, says a press release.

In the future, other types of DFAs will be launched on the platform. Earlier this month, Moscow Credit Bank, the largest private regional bank in Russia, announced that it has used Masterchain to issue Russia’s first digital bank guarantee in Chinese yuan.

DFAs, digital assets that have an issuing entity, were regulated in Russia with the law “On Digital Financial Assets” which entered into force in January 2021.

In February this year, the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, passed a bill on first reading that will allow financial platform operators to also develop and manage blockchain platforms.

Russia has yet to regulate decentralized cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Amid Western sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine, including economic restrictions, support has grown in Moscow for the legalization of at least some crypto operations, such as cross-border payments.

Do you think Russia will continue to expand the market for digital financial assets? Share your expectations in the comments section below.

Lubomir Tassev

Lubomir Tassev is a journalist from tech-savvy Eastern Europe who likes Hitchens’ quote: “To be a writer is what I am, rather than what I do.” Besides crypto, blockchain and fintech, international politics and economics are two other sources of inspiration.